Facts
- Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU), a public employer, offered group health insurance to employees and “eligible family members,” including legal spouses and dependent children, as defined by the public employee benefits board.
- Same-sex domestic partners categorically did not qualify as eligible family members because Oregon law did not permit same-sex couples to marry.
- Three lesbian OHSU employees and their domestic partners sought dependent coverage and were denied because the partners were not legal spouses.
- Plaintiffs alleged they were similarly situated to employees in opposite-sex relationships who could marry and thereby obtain spousal coverage.
- Plaintiffs sued, asserting violations of ORS 659.030(1)(b) (employment discrimination in terms or privileges of employment) and Article I, section 20 of the Oregon Constitution (privileges and immunities).
- After a bench trial, the circuit court found for plaintiffs on both claims and entered an injunction barring the state from denying group insurance benefits to unmarried domestic partners of homosexual employees.
- Defendants appealed the statutory and constitutional rulings.
Issues
- Whether denying dependent health-insurance benefits to same-sex domestic partners constitutes unlawful discrimination in the “terms, conditions or privileges of employment” under ORS 659.030(1)(b).
- Whether limiting spousal health-insurance benefits to married couples, when same-sex couples were legally barred from marrying, violates Article I, section 20 of the Oregon Constitution.
Decision
- The Oregon Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment and injunction.
- The court held that restricting dependent coverage to legal spouses, in the context of a legal ban on same-sex marriage, violated Article I, section 20 by granting a state-conferred privilege on terms not equally available to the affected class.
- The court also upheld the ruling that the benefits policy violated ORS 659.030(1)(b) as discrimination in employment benefits tied to sexual orientation/sex of the employee’s partner.
Legal Principles
- Article I, section 20 prohibits the state from granting privileges or immunities to one citizen or class of citizens on terms not equally available to all citizens.
- A facially neutral eligibility criterion can violate Article I, section 20 when it operates as an exclusionary device against a distinct class that cannot satisfy the criterion because of state law.
- Under Article I, section 20 analysis, unequal access to a state benefit for a particular class must be justified by legitimate, non-arbitrary reasons related to the purposes of the benefit; exclusion lacking such justification is unconstitutional.
- Employer-provided health insurance is a “term, condition or privilege of employment” within ORS 659.030(1)(b).
- Denying employment benefits to employees based on the sex of their chosen partner, where marriage is legally unavailable to them, can constitute actionable discrimination under ORS 659.030(1)(b).
Conclusion
The court affirmed an injunction requiring equal access to public-employee group insurance benefits for same-sex domestic partners, holding that a spousal-only benefits rule—where same-sex couples could not marry—violated Oregon’s privileges-and-immunities clause and state employment discrimination law.